The entrepreneur (Ben Rubin) who launched a successful web application is back with a new product that will build the next generation of a decentralized web, freeing users from the grip of the individuals who control them.
In 2015, Robin launched the mobile live broadcasting application Meerkat, which quickly became popular, attracting many users but not gaining traction. After launching the competing Twitter app (Periscope), Facebook is entering the competition with its social network. Forcing Robin in 2016. March shutting down the app after only a year.
Before closing Meerkat, Robin launched his new Houseparty app, Houseparty, as a social networking service that allows users to make group video calls from mobile and desktop devices.
After the success of the application, Epic Games acquired it in 2019 and integrated it into their famous game (Fortnite), but the video game industry decided to close the application by the end of 2021.
Robin is now back with Towns, an open source web application and group chat protocol with the slogan "Proprietary Domains for Digital Communities".
“For the past decade, the digital world in which we gather online to connect, create, and share has been trapped in a walled garden with owners other than ours,” the service’s website reads. Their own online experience and a real sense of belonging to our digital community.”
That's why Towns was born as a group chat protocol and app designed for digital communities to build better "cities" on the web. Cities allows community members to truly own their own domain and communicate freely through end-to-end encryption and a fully decentralized chat history, primarily owned by the users themselves.
Cities enable digital communities to create programmable and autonomous spaces of communication. Any group can use cities to meet and discuss freely in a space that suits their needs without fear of an organization changing the rules, exploiting their activism, or disenfranchising them.
With regard to the mechanism of (Towns) work, the official explained that each "town" consists of three basic components, namely: (Towns Protocol), (AppTowns), and (decentralized autonomous organization of cities) daoTowns.
The Cities protocol consists of "configurable smart contracts". Towns is a smart contract system based on the Ethereum cryptocurrency that allows users to control their digital spaces. These contracts are extensible, configurable, and scalable, allowing the community to write their own moderation rules, access, and monetize.
The protocol also includes a decentralized network consisting of an end-to-end, near-zero-latency encrypted communications system governed by Towns smart contract and backed by a decentralized and distributed network of Proof of Stake nodes.
With appTowns, seamless direct integration with the next-generation Web3 ecosystem within the app gives new ways to connect with the community like never before.
"It's not just a cryptocurrency project," Rubin told TechCrunch, "it's a new way of thinking about social networks as networks that are owned and operated by their members."
For users less keen on cryptocurrency but still interested in Townes' decentralizing principles, Townes will also appear as a suite of apps, starting with the first alpha-beta app now available by invitation.
A larger beta is planned for September, allowing anyone to create their own community using the Cities protocol, followed by a mobile web app in the coming months, followed by a local app. In the future, Robin expects more users to build Towns applications using the project protocol.
For the time being, users could use their cryptocurrency wallets to enter the “city” of the project, but later via (password), a next-generation login technology.
It should be noted that the UX of the Towns web app is very similar to the Discord chat platform, allowing users to create and communicate through communities with different interests.